March Planning

I would love to say that last week has been fairly eventful, but lets be honest....it wasn't. Since I don't believe there is some unwritten rule that every week of your life must be absolutely amazing in order for you to write a blog, here are some small events of the last week.

No one seems to mention that when you are working on getting a Master's or PhD that you will spend a good chunk of your time filling out and waiting on paperwork in order to even do your research. Although I'm lucky I only had a couple of forms instead of many licenses and permits that wildlife researchers need, the waiting is still a pain.

So what form is the most painful? The animal ethics approval is in my opinion the most annoying, but is also the most important. In this form you have to explain all the details of what you plan to do with the animals and also explain why this research is necessary, why you couldn't do any other way, etc. I really dislike these because some of the questions aren't really applicable for the extremely non-invasive nature of my research. What am I doing? Putting audio and video recording devices in an area the tigers can't get to and recording the tigers. How will this affect the animals? It won't. In fact, this research is so non-invasive that Taronga zoo, where I am doing the study, doesn't require ethics and they call this opportunistic sampling. As annoying as ethics forms and their questions are, they are very important in assuring all research is taking into consideration the welfare of the animals and other alternatives that may be available.

Not really relevant, but still awesome!

At Macquarie University the animal ethics committee meets once a month to discuss all the applications so it is important to get in the forms as early as possible. This is all done electronically for the first time at Macquarie and this presented many frustrations. Although my supervisor filled out the online application in January, we found out in February they wanted some revisions and details. That's when we discovered that the website had some major flaws. It took me over an hour just to log in to the program and get to the correct page, then of course it would log me out and not save what I had just typed. Luckily I got it all done the day the committee was meeting!

Unfortunately, not too long after we were informed our approval was denied and we would have to make more revisions and turn it in for the next month! My supervisor was very angry that they would deny "the most non-invasive research" she has ever done. Later, I had a full day animal ethics workshop (required for all newbies doing animal ethics forms and research) and was able to ask the main ethics dude why it was denied. It turns out some of my edits on the form did not get saved and therefore the committee didn't see that we had fixed issues. Additionally, we still needed a license from Taronga Zoo showing that they have the authority to have tigers on exhibit. If I could make the edits and get the license he said he would get it approved and I wouldn't have to wait another month. After many calls and e-mails to people at Taronga Zoo we finally got the correct form and I was informed on Friday it had been approved! This was a gruelling experience that I hope to never repeat again! At least now I know that the ethics site doesn't have issues on PC's!

Whew! During all the paperwork fun, I was also able to get a job! I was told about a coaching/tutoring job for 5 hrs/wk helping a student with some animal related courses. One of the courses is taught by my supervisor Jennifer who referred me to the job. I love tutoring so I'm excited to help and it's not too many hours to overwhelm me and it pays $45/hr!

On a different note Matt and I were able to go to the temple on Thursday night. It had been a long time since we just kept forgetting about it. When we got there we were asked if we wanted to do sealings and I am glad we did! It was nice to do something a little different and also be reminded of the commitments we made to each other when we first got married.

Over the weekend I did some much needed cleaning and was even able to pin Matt down to do a planning meeting! We scheduled in the next month's temple day and other important dates, discussed our monthly goals, and important things we needed to get done. It was great and this was part of the result:

I know have LOTS of calendars and lists, but whatever works to get things done! Matt now has a white board full of long list of to-dos that I will no doubt keep regularly stocked. Unfortunately he just happened to marry someone that is not so great at sitting still, but at least we were able to end our day with a nice movie called Princess Mononoke and some Tim Tam Slams (click here for some Tim Tam wikipedia info - apparently you can do this with a twix)!

Speaking of important things to get done....US taxes are due just next month! This has been an extremely frustrating process for me since our tax forms showed up at different places and I had to track them all down, and some things were missing. It turns out even though I qualify for education credits at Macquarie, they don't file the typical forms that US institutions do. After contacting IRS tax offices, H&R Block tax consultants, our personal tax consultant, and reading about all the details on the IRS website I finally figured it all out. Basically I just need the university to give me a filled out unofficial form with supporting documents so I have them on file if the IRS needs further documentation. Not to mention I just found out we can claim moving expenses, so that's yet another thing I have to calculate. This is certainly a complicated process.

Yesterday was also surprisingly eventful as I decided to work from home and found out that the researcher who's desk I was using came back! He'll be around for the next two weeks so I guess I'm back to being a nomad. I'm crossing my fingers I can officially claim the desk and then start redecorating the area with tiger stuff. Luckily, I was able to still get work done at home and used a new pomodairo app to help me stay on task by working for 25 minutes than taking short 5 minute breaks.

Later that day I went to have my skin appointment to help treat all my acne scars and discolouration. This was the first time I had this treatment and it is kind of painful, but it was the smell that got to me. I told the woman doing it that the device smelled awful like it was burning, and she laughed and said actually that's your skin! So now I know what burning flesh smells like and it looks like I got a bad sunburn just on my face. I'm glad I've worked with these people for months so that when I got to this point I trust them!  Here are some progression photos (I couldn't find my before photos which are awful!) and yes I look terrible, but the point is to show that it is getting better!

After first few treatments

After about 5 months

Right after my last treatment 

Surprisingly no one commented on my weird blotchy red face when I went to our second "Come Dine with Me" dinner at Mike and Erika Barnett's place. They did a fantastic job! They made multiple sliders (mini-hamburgers) placed on plates out of pieces of wood which they had burned letters into to signify which one was Chicken, Pork, and Beef. They were quite tasty as well as the cole-slaw, potato and sweet-potato wedges to accompany them. For desert we had a slice of chocolate pie with fresh berries and cream. Yumm!! Of course not just the food was great, but the company was just as fun. It was a great night full of good food, friends, and plenty of laughter!